The communications industry is rapidly changing to adjust to emerging technologies and ever increasing customer demand. This customer demand for new applications and increased performance of existing applications is driving communications network and system providers to employ networks and systems having greater speed and capacity (e.g., greater bandwidth). In trying to achieve these goals, a common approach taken by many communications providers is to use packet switching technology. Note, nothing described or referenced in this document is admitted as prior art to this application unless explicitly so stated.
It is common for customer networks at different locations to be interconnected using tunnels or pseudo wires over a connecting network (e.g., service provider's network). For example, an edge router of this connecting network receives packets from a first network, encapsulates and transports the packets over the tunnel or pseudo wire to another edge router, which strips the encapsulation and forwards the packets onto the second network. Routers in the connecting network between the edge routers are often referred to as midpoint routers. These midpoint routers may perform load balancing in the connecting network, such as by each midpoint router selecting a next hop towards the edge router in order to distribute the load across the network but in a manner that all packets in a tunnel or pseudo wire follow the same path through the connecting network.